Amma’s voice caught at the sting of her own blade pressed to her skin. Her body wanted to flee though it was held impossibly tight under his grip, and her own hand on him shuddered and pulled back.
Delphine tutted. “Oh, by all the ridiculous gods, who cares how you do it, justdo it. I want to see her blood spill, darling, one way or another.” There was a crackle of violet in Delphine’s hand, and arcana sizzled through the air.
Damien’s grip on her arm tightened, but the blade didn’t move, and she could just see its delicate filigree with the flick of her gaze downward. At least if she were going to die, it would be to something so pretty, the tiniest consolation. Amma met his eyes again, dead as they were, and gave her head a shake.
“No, Bloodthorne, not like this,” Xander droned, the sounds of him struggling to stand filling the chamber. “Remember, we don’t like messy things. Bring her back to my place first, and we’ll sort out the details there.” With a hazy flash and the wave of Xander’s hand, a shadow imp materialized and swooped over their heads toward Delphine.
There was a twitch of recognition in Damien’s face, a narrowing of eyes and a curl to his lip, that cruel look he’d had so long ago when they first met reemerging.
“Don’t listen to him,” Delphine snapped, waving the ball of arcana she held and snuffing the imp right out of existence. “Xander hasneverhad your best interests at heart. Just kill the harlot and be done with it already.”
Another twitch on his face, fingers digging into Amma’s arm as she held her breath, afraid if she moved, she might accidentally do the job for them all.
Xander had made it to his feet, and with a flourish, he called up two more imps. “Damien,” he said, the name nothing short ofa demand, “drop her, and come here.”
At that, pressure was taken off Amma’s neck, and she sucked in a breath.
Delphine gasped, jumping to her feet. “Damien, no, you slit her throat right now and come overhere.” More erratically, the woman cast on the imps, striking down one while the other maneuvered around Damien and Amma, getting much closer before it too disappeared under Delphine’s magic.
The blood mage’s brow creased, eyes darting to the ground. The laxness to his features was retreating, cruelty replaced with confusion.
“Damien,” Amma whispered, and his gaze snapped back up to hers, the knife still hovering between them. She carefully reached a hand up to feel the stickiness of her own blood on her neck that had been brought up by the blade.
Xander whistled sharply as he stepped nearer, drawing Damien’s actual gaze. He injected his voice with a lightness though he struggled to breathe. “Over here, boy, come on! Come to Shadowhart, you know you want to.”
Delphine screeched, her arcana arcing over them to make Xander convulse under a strike. She strode from her throne, crossing the bridge over the pit, and cleared her throat, trying to mimic Xander’s sweetness. “Now, dearest, if you come to Delphine, you might get a treat!” Her dress caught on a thorn and she grunted, ripping it away. “Just cut the bitch already.”
Amma rubbed her bloodied fingers together. She bled so infrequently, yet Damien constantly drew his own to cast. There were no plants close enough for Amma to call on for help, no imp left to assist her, there was only Damien and blood and…and the talisman.
A memory bloomed into her mind, a tree with golden tendrils reaching inside her, wrapping around the foreign stone, intending to sever her connection to it and to him. Amma hadchosen to keep it.
That’s my blood in there now too.That was what Damien had said in Tarfail Quag when he’d not wanted the swamp to get a taste for her, haughty, arrogant, and absolutely right.
Arcana shot over their heads as the blood mage and nox-touched traded spells, still calling to Damien to command him, though their focus even as each crept closer, seemed to be on one another and who might triumph. Damien’s face contorted, struggling, eyes closed, completely overwhelmed.
“Sanguinisui,” Amma whispered, taking her bloodied fingers and pressing them gently to a cut on his cheek, “wake up.”
Damien’s eyes shot open, the lifelessness gone. They filled with everything at once, fear, anger, shock, elation, lost one moment and then found, finally landing on a softness that made Amma’s heart swell. Her name was on his lips, but full of adoration as the blue-black veins receded from his skin.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, the words breaking in his throat as he lowered the dagger. “Never.”
“I know.” Amma clung to him and pulled him close.
The air sizzled, a frigid jolt running between the two. Delphine strode right up to them, her hands alight with arcana. “I said, kill her,” she snapped, and the veins along Damien’s skin pulsed anew, his eyes flashing with an anger Amma had never seen before. The dagger gleamed, brilliant as it slashed through the air too quickly for Amma to avoid. He would never, he had just said, and yet.
Amma’s hand went to her neck, then slid to her chest, but there was no blood and no hilt. Her gaze fell to Damien’s outstretched arm, taut with the strike he had just made.
Delphine sucked in a breath, metallic eyes falling to her chest where Amma’s dagger had finally found its target by Damien’s hand. Blood didn’t seep out of the wound, not at first, as if it were as stunned as she. Damien dragged Amma up against himas the woman’s magic fizzled, arms falling lax at her sides. She stumbled a step backward and then another.
“How could you?” There was a shakiness to her voice, all of the certainty wrung out of it, eyes still transfixed on the delicate hilt. Wetness blossomed away from the wound. “But, darling,” she managed weakly, “I only wanted to help.”
“Perhaps you finally will,” said Damien, gesturing to the ground.
A small hand poked up from the trough and wrapped around her ankle. She screeched as if she’d been burned, blood bubbling up out of her mouth. As she kicked at it, there was another hand that gripped her shin.
Silvery eyes crested the pit’s edge, staring up adoringly as they climbed. The woman flailed, but there were more little hands working together to cling on, tiny fingers sticky with dirt and blood clutching at the ripped train of her dress, and Delphine plunged backward. Her shrieking howls filled the desecrated temple, layered over the horrific sounds of tearing flesh and gnashing teeth.
Damien and Amma pulled away from the pit, the noises more than enough to tell them what was happening within. When the screaming and chewing died away, they stood in the silence, arms around each other, and then he turned to her. “Deepest darkness, Amma, please forgive me.”
